Imagine Earth News

The first update of Imagine Earth in 2019 brings you a new power construct which is built on the open sea with three brand new forces to unleash and a devastating catastrophe. As always there are tons of UI, AI and game balancing improvements. We reworked the first three missions intensively and enhanced the effects and visualization of global warming... We hope you enjoy the latest features and changes and send feedback and requests into our forum!
Cheers, Jens & Martin


The ocean citadel is a powerful construction of the Nootilas, it can convert Gaian energy into force fields which influence sea and weather conditions. It is to be found on the open sea of course.




A power of the ocean citadel provokes a thunderstorm that moves across the planet in wind direction. The storm can cause wildfires and incidents in production facilities. Thunderstorms are also natural catastrophes whose occurrence becomes more likely with increasing global warming.



This power of the ocean citadel generates a gaian force field that vitalises the flora on the seabed and allows sea plants and occasionally corals to grow. This is helpful to re-balance the carbon emission balance on the planet.



This Gaian force field of the ocean citadel lowers the tectonic continental plates - entire regions sink into the sea. Keep the mouse button pressed to apply the power.

Land reclamation works the same way from now on.
We redesigned the Cover Image, the website, Steam and social media channel


You can now reuse forces and items by holding the shift key as long as you have more items of the same kind or enough gaian energy left in the according power constructs.


Due to the importance of this feature we have represented Global Warming more prominently in the Interface. You get a permanent display and icon for the emission balance and the global warming in percentage. And there is a global value of sea-level and temperature rise. The population counter has moved to the left of the UI also because it is not global.



For better information it displays how high a certain piece of land is above the sea-level which is of particular interest in case of global warming. Will it be flooded by the melting polar caps?



We deactivated the quarantine of the planet in case of climate collapse which ended game way too early. You can now live on a ravaged planet with maximum climate chaos and all the catastrophes arising with it and still try to make your living or win a competitive round somehow.

You can activate this quarantine when starting a new game to stop a round when it gets almost hopeless. Also we changed the visualization of high global warming which was a bit over the top with yellow coloring of the oceans and the atmosphere.


In one of the next updates we plan to further increase the effect of global warming on the local field temperature and buildings


Again we had to rework many aspects of the first three missions of Tuto, Joma and Lorian to improve the experience of the campaign, make it more accessible to new players and adjust them to the lately added features.

• AI now uses temple powers to sabotage enemy colonies
  
• AI will actively expand into territory of enemies when additional land is needed
  
• AI will respect border of alliance colonies
  
• AI gets a Pulse cannon in time
  
• AI tries to explore cannons if necessary
  

• Display overview of other factions in missions
  
• a bar displays the goals for achieving new research, tech licenses and landing permits as such.
  
• storage capacity is visualized more intuitive in the resource menu
  
• New and universal desktop icon for the game and for all social media accounts
  
• Increased speed of tooltips. Especially in build menu
  
• Influence of temperature on productivity is now shown in the build ring as well
  
• Improved drone flight
  
• Cinematic landing animation for dropping asteroids, trader, vendor and the Midras drillbot
  
• Visualization when using Soma item
  
• Restored loading animation
  

• Fixed some issues of trader speakers, icons and ships that have been swapped
  
• Fixed pirates event not being triggered
  
• Towers only loose claim for surrounding fields when completely destroyed
  
• Increased reach of ideon bombs and comparable items
  
• Fixed: Speaker is sometimes interrupted by other sounds in the main menu
  
• Laser attacks should no longer trigger fires
  
• Selling and buying of items now also influences their pricing
  
• Increase in Gaia power is no longer increased linearly with additional surrounding population (but logarithmic)
  
• Fixed pollution created when destroying mountains
  
• Ideon bomb no longer destroys the rare rocks that appear when a big mountain is blown up
  
• Science district gives research bonus instead of improved quality of life
  
• Assimilator settings decrease/increases probability of uplinks landing
  
• Changed balancing of fights between assimilator drone and frontier towers
  
• Assimilator drone no longer follows fleeing city capsule
  
• Temples can now be destroyed
  

Again we have a big December update for you with lots of interesting features that will refresh the space colonizing business. Have a look and give us your feedback on how they work...

Of course we'd like to take the opportunity to wish you all pleasant holidays and a happy new year in advance! We plan to celebrate the final release of Imagine Earth together in mid 2019!





The Sabotage item hacks supply buildings within a small radius and sets them into the state of malfunction in which they stop production and are constantly damaged until the building is destroyed or the malfunction is fixed.





Supply capsules contain items, resources and building construction kits. The colony that claims the field it landed on can take the cargo. The capsule will then disassemble automatically. They will land randomly on the planet throughout gameplay.




New orbital lifts show you when colonists are coming or leaving your colony. This animation makes the colony more lively and visualizes where the colonists come from and where they disappear to when the quality of life is too low.





In the campaign galaxy you will now see a completion panel that shows your overall campaign progress. More important the colony ratings on all planets are wrapped up in a company rating that is compared in a global ranking.





You can now revisit colonies after finishing the mission to find the remaining ideon crystals and to raise your colony rating by expanding your colony.

Campaign research and unlocked buildings are permanent. So you can use the technology you gathered in later missions to advance the cities when your return to earlier colonized planets.





Other corporations now have three shared diplomatic statuses: rivalry, neutral or alliance. They define if other factions trade with you and if there will be discounts. It also influences AI behavior: An alliance partner will respect your territory - a rival will actively grab your land.





We have added brand new AI behaviors to make factions more lively and authentic actors in the game. They may contact you via the message system and to propose neutrality or an alliance. In addition they will cancel an alliance or even declare rivalry when your relation is very bad. The AI remembers when you have helped against threats like an epidemic and alien invasions by using items or temple powers

• Added clarifying goals on Bora to help Otarek against Assimilators
  
• Introduction briefings for all game modes
  
• Steam store page updated with images and Simplified Chinese version
  
• Landing and starting animations for the Boss' and Leen's command center
  
• Increased number of sleeping volcanoes in ice worlds
  
• AI now uses pulse cannons more often
  
• Pulse cannons will destroy small meteors with one shot
  
• Cannons will not focus on asteroids when another cannon is already targeting it
  
• Engagement popup: Ask players for feedback after having played 20 hours of having finished the campaign
  
• Asteroid rocks give stone quarry an extra bonus
  

• Now possible to get the "scientists" research achievement
  
• Harvesting of rare asteroids is properly displayed in the resource statistics
  
• Alignment of level visualization for city centers
  
• Waking up volcanoes in sandbox editor is working again
  
• Size of world icons when using different UI scales
  
• Leveling frontier buoys is working again
  
• Display range when building maintenance station and remediation center
  

Greetings, Space Colony Managers!

The Universe is expanding! Because of this growing luxury of empty void we implemented much bigger planets into Imagine Earth which can be played with or against up to 6 factions. There is now technology trade to make other colonies more interesting.

There is a new trailer as well as tons of gameplay fixes and improvements to make Imagine Earth ready for the launch of early access on Humble Store on Nov 9th... - that's right, two days ahead! :D Please share the joy about this with us and the rest of the world.


We implemented bigger Planets into the game because many of you asked for them. Let us know if you have any feature requests, ideas and stuff coming to your mind while checking out the latest version. Here are the details:

• Biggest planet has 2880 compared to previously 2000 fields
  
• Increased maximum competing companies to 6 (from 4)
  
• Maximum landmass increased to 80% of planet
  
• Tuto twice the size (720 fields, previously 320)
  
• Addition: Tuto mission has received a lot of detail improvements to make it a smoother experience
  

Now you can buy single construction kits for buildings from other corporations. This means trading with other colonies gets more interesting.

Each building that has been licensed by the other colony will be offered in their store - given that your diplomatic status is good enough. Of course it will be much more expansive to buy these single construction kits and therefor make sense to license a construct yourself if you need it more often.

As you can see we started implementing epic cut-scenes to introduce all other factions, traders and invaders landing on your planet for the first time.

https://youtu.be/NXtSLwv8-oQ

The last update introduced planetary themes and this time we made a general and huge rework of the themes textures to make them look more diverse and individual and last be not least, much better.

Volcanic world for example has by default no polar caps (so no rising sea level)


Another important step done in order to make the AI fair and fun to play: The AI now has to research upgrades and other improvements in order to use them. So far those tricksters were able to build any upgrade without having to research it.


The existing trailer clearly needed a remake and has been replaced with a new one that is much more relying on in-game graphics to give you a perfect introduction into the actual game. Watch it and enjoy advanced space traveling via ideon powered hypergates!

https://youtu.be/GjwPzI1D-DE

• New Music Track. Tracks are now looped to a maximum of three minutes and than randomly change.
  
• Forests back in build ring. No longer license-able.
  
• Removed remediation from tool ring.
  
• Increased maintenance cost for forestry (the relatively low cost was basically the reason the AI most times choose to build it).
  
• Changed description and factors of industrial farm GM upgrade to make it less confusing
  
• Sleeping volcano new better visualized and explained
  
• Increased number of volcanoes and likelihood of erupting every once in a while
  
• Rare rocks are now also detected on neighboring fields
  
• During campaign also block fields next to rocks for first city center
  
• Auto saves are now done based on real time instead of in-game time
  
• Dead sea grass on land field is automatically removed
  
• Dead forests can now be removed
  
• Desertification can now also be canceled with temple powers (growth and fertility) and super-fertilizer
  
• Temple power cure can now also be used on other colonies
  
• Assimilator uplinks can now also be set on fire while they are building a drone. The uplink will extinguish itself after some time, though
  

• New fertility icon
  
• Build process is now visualized with the icon of the building
  
• Influences of neighbor buildings are now visualized with the resource type icon instead of the buildings icon
  
• For huge buildings and mountains influence icons are now only displayed on the main field
  
• Harvesting resources new displays the corresponding resource icon
  
• Improved goal description visualization
  
• Improved mouse responsibility when interaction with menus
  
• Added separate smiley when a district is losing people due to missing food
  
• Added icon to build ring to clearer distinguish it from the tool ring
  
• Highlight in inventory when new item has been crafted
  
• New sound for cancel
  
• Dead forests and temple ruins are now properly named
  
• Added tooltip for fossil resources to field info panel in bottom left
  
• Adjusted building order in the technology panel
  
• Improved game over dialog
  

• Fixed a bug where the game didn't start at all on windows 7 systems
  
• Fixed graphics bug for assimilated cities and city centers level 2 and 3
  
• Display fires in the short-cut panel (top right)
  
• Fixed a bug where fires could not be extinguished
  
• Fixed description of the fire temple power
  
• When blasting mountains sometimes two rocks where placed at the same field
  

Dear Colony Managers, in this update we increase the visual and gameplay diversity of our planets with the themes Jungle, Terran, Swamp, Barren, Volcanic and Frozen. Also we dedicated a lot of our time into making the Tuto and Joma mission a better experience. Read on to find out what else has changed.

• Rocks, Asteroids & Scanner
  
• Gaia Forces in Build Ring
  
• Drone Priorities
  
• Planet Themes
  
• Storytelling
  
• Translation
  
• UI & Graphics
  
• Money Balancing
  
• Balancing & Fixes
  

Asteroids now can contain all types of rare resources. They look different and when you decide to throw one of these asteroids against an opponent you might accidentally send him a big present full of ideon or lithium.



Scanners are having an increased scan radius and an increased value in gameplay. You will now have to scan all rocks to find out if there's any gold, titanium, lithium or ideon hidden in them.
Rare resources are automatically detected when you take over the field into your build radius. The amount of rare resources on all planets has been raised in general.




You can now access all the forces you have loaded in temples right from the build ring. Therefor we have thrown the forest ring out of the ring menu because you can only build forests with seed bombs from now on and the different types of forest weren't relevant enough for gameplay to take up an own slot in the main build menu.


Drones no prioritize open tasks. Dealing with fires is most important, followed by repairing highly damaged buildings. After that they will deal with new buildings and other things. They only return to the city center when they need a package to build something.



We have set up six general presets or themes for planets, so you can choose quickly under which conditions you want to play a competition round or freeplay. Choices are Terran conditions, Frozen World, Swamp, Barren, Jungle or Volcanic World.

In addition there are new mountain models on many of our planets.


We reworked the first three missions, so that you can play more straight through without being interrupted by dialogs and story suddenly popping up. More story elements are now clickable in form of info and mission icons. So you can start cut-scene when you are ready. On the other hand we made them auto started when nothing was happening story-wise for some time so you don't miss important story elements.
To make the factions more personal we have individual victory messages when others win in competition mode.

• Steam store front has been translated into Spanish
  
• Many new Russian translations for buildings, tools and UI
  

[gallery]

• Bookmark panel on the upper right has a special section for dangers now
  
• New panel to display construct and upgrade details on technology screen
  
• New character for the Midras Miner
  
• Visualize fertility influence more clearly
  
• Districts: blue light when level-up possible
  
• Increased display size of warning icons
  
• Reduce snow intensity on streets
  
• Text colors on menu buttons changed so text stays more readable
  
• Added out of money message for multi-upgrading
  
• Progress ring for temple plundering
  
• New landing animation for Leen's ship
  
• Trader Icons darker
  
• Spaceport launch ramp remodeled
  

• When you take over an opponents city by buying up his shares you will no longer have to pay an extra money fee for the takeover as you paid for the shares already.
  
• City center takeover only costs shares (no more money)
  
• Rebuilding a city center with a new landing permit is now free of charge because generally you have paid for the landing permit itself or earned it otherwise.
  
• You will be getting more dividend payments out of shares you hold of other corporations to make the feature more relevant.
  
• The emission levy costs for air pollution have been reduced as it was so high that it ate up almost all of the companies profit.
  

• New range upgrades for maintenance and remediation buildings
  
• Relocating fishing ships made cheaper
  
• Warehouse: Default storage for energy food and goods is smaller. Reduced price for upgrades
  
• Increase the amount of rare resources on planets
  
• AI should include pollution in field assessment
  
• Glass factory and solar park no longer need 45°C to reach max productivity
  
• Reduced native trade frequency
  
• Reduced Bironix trade favor to 10%
  
• Increased number of science level research goals
  

• Activated desertification (!)
  
• Adjacency bonus for the stone quarry doesn't work if rocks are in the water
  
• Food shortage despite reported overproduction
  
• Remediation does not work on ruin fields
  
• Negative ghost income on startup
  
• Radius of lasers and health districts is sometime incorrect
  
• Black hole on top of small planets (e.g. Tuto)
  
• Fixed 4:3 screen UI problems
  
• Research tool-tips were sometimes partly outside of the screen
  
• Storing mechanic of Lithium not working correct
  
• Midras and natives repair themselves
  

Dear Colony Managers, space is getting more frightening by now as a new threat is arising. Read about space pirates, special vendors, unique landing ships for all eight corporations and much more in our latest update release #45. Here's what we got for you this time:

• Beware the Space Pirates
  
• New Item: Resource Piracy
  
• Unique Landing Ships
  
• Three Specialized Traders
  
• Resource Trading Partners and Auto-Trade
  
• Emission Trade and Visualization
  
• More New Features & Fixes
  

These nasty creatures land a strange kind of unknown flying object right over your warehouse to plunder it with their tractor beam. Simultaneously they start firing their board cannon to vandalize your base.



You can helplessly sit back and relax until they have stolen enough and loose interest. Or, you can choose to pay a ransom or install an energy shield onto a tower to block the guys off from your warehouses. In later missions you might as well develop lasers or pulse canons to give them a warm welcome if they ever return...


These pirates are not only a threat that randomly happens. You can also craft a landing control to send them upon one of your opponents. Sweet addition: You get half of what their ship can steal.


We are proudly presenting individual colony landing ships for all eight corporations.



After having introduced the individual factions last update now you can tell the difference between them by looking at their landing ship, which is automatically expanded into the main city tower after landing.




They come around with awesome looking new space ships amazing landing animations ;-). And they are specialized to trade either wares, items and tech, or rare resources.




The resource panel has been split into a money and a resources part. This helps to put the four basic resource classes and their storing and trading issues directly into the middle of your attention.

It now also shows you if there is another colony or trader able and willing to sell a certain resource to you when you need it (e.g for crafting).

You can also activate the automatic purchase and sale of resources. Note that this involves trading with every potential trading partner - regardless of whether the price is fair or not.




The emission levy now always must be payed as soon, as a company on the planet has a negative emission balance. Environmentally friendly corporations get emission trade payouts if there is a company that pays in.
The global emission balance is now visualized with positive values when the world's climate is OK. It's represented with negative red numbers when climate balance is going bad. Much more intuitive isn't it?

• Now you get written info on all construct upgrades left to the tool ring.
  
• The field info panel with details on deposits, pollution and other values of a single field is now also visible in navigation mode.
  
• The probability of occurrence of riots and epidemics was too low. it has been increased by about 40%.
  
• When using the seed bomb or nitro-skirlide seeds you can now see how well the plants will grow in that area.
  
• There's now a countdown for competitors coming down and landing their capsules. This puts you a bit under time pressure to find the best place for the base.
  
• You can buy landing permits in missions as soon as you got the second city center. Good news in case a city is burning down.
  
• Temples can now be repaired.
  
• Trading panel improvements
  

• Rewritten - Hypergate Ideon Objective - the vendor states out more clearly have to find and also sell the ideon crystal to him to open hyperspace gate into Udoxia Galaxy.
  
• Rebalanced - Higher runtime costs for remediation centers
  
• Fixed - Temples are no longer charging themselves apparently by surrounding nature or stuff
  
• Fixed - Rocks had a shimmering on the surface as if they where rare resources
  
• Fixed - A city center landing is now final - no more abort and vanishing of the landing capsule
  
• Fixed - Background of colony value
  
• Changed - Loading screens animations
  
• Fixed - Many particle emitter problems
  
• Fixed - Warehouse Upgrades couldn't be activated in the tech-panel
  
• Fixed - Cure goal bar looked finished after half of the task
  
• Fixed - Savegame buttons in sandbox mode or messed up
  
• Highscore background bar is reworked
  
• Fixes for Rounos mission: Joe story plot does not wait for clicking the quest icons anymore.
  
• Tornado fix - still visible in navigation when multiple tornados in one field.
  
• Midras Extractor Temple has model and animation fixes
  
• Midras Digger fixed model and particle system. Dust when drilling.
  
• Spaceport fixes
  

Thanks for your attention once again! We hope you enjoy playing Imagine Earth and share with us your ideas on development.